Dispatches from Iraq“Unusual” Weapons Used in Fallujahby Dahr Jamail
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 29, 2004DahrJamailIraq.com

BAGHDAD,
(IPS) -- The U.S. military has used poison gas and other non-conventional
weapons against civilians in Fallujah, eyewitnesses report.

“Poisonous gases have
been used in Fallujah,” 35-year-old trader from Fallujah Abu Hammad told IPS.
“They used everything -- tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah
has been bombed to the ground.”

Hammad is from the
Julan district of Fallujah where some of the heaviest fighting occurred.
Other residents of that area report the use of illegal weapons.

“They used these weird
bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud,” Abu Sabah, another Fallujah
refugee from the Julan area told IPS. “Then small pieces fall from the air
with long tails of smoke behind them.”

He said pieces of
these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water
was thrown on the burns. Phosphorous weapons as well as napalm are known to
cause such effects. “People suffered so much from these,” he said.

Macabre accounts of killing of civilians are emerging through the cordon
U.S. forces are still maintaining around Fallujah.

“Doctors in Fallujah
are reporting to me that there are patients in the hospital there who were
forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance
driver at a hospital in Baghdad. “Some doctors there told me they had a
major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the
patient to die.”

Kassem Mohammed Ahmed
who escaped from Fallujah a little over a week ago told IPS he witnessed
many atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in the city.

“I watched them roll
over wounded people in the street with tanks,” he said. “This happened so
many times.”

Abdul Razaq Ismail who
escaped from Fallujah two weeks back said soldiers had used tanks to pull
bodies to the soccer stadium to be buried. “I saw dead bodies on the ground
and nobody could bury them because of the American snipers,” he said. “The
Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near
Fallujah.”

Abu Hammad said he saw
people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. “The
Americans shot them with rifles from the shore,” he said. “Even if some of
them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show
they are not fighters, they were all shot.”

Hammad said he had
seen elderly women carrying white flags shot by U.S. soldiers. “Even the
wounded people were killed. The Americans made announcements for people to
come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who
went there carrying white flags were killed.”

Another Fallujah
resident Khalil (40) told IPS he saw civilians shot as they held up
makeshift white flags. “They shot women and old men in the streets,” he
said. ”Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies...Fallujah is
suffering too much, it is almost gone now.”

Refugees had moved to
another kind of misery now, he said. “It's a disaster living here at this
camp,” Khalil said. ”We are living like dogs and the kids do not have enough
clothes.”

Spokesman for the
Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad Abdel Hamid Salim told IPS that none of their
relief teams had been allowed into Fallujah, and that the military had said
it would be at least two more weeks before any refugees would be allowed
back into the city.

“There is still heavy
fighting in Fallujah,” said Salim. “And the Americans won't let us in so we
can help people.”

In many camps
around Fallujah and throughout Baghdad, refugees are living without enough
food, clothing and shelter. Relief groups estimate there are at least 15,000
refugee families in temporary shelters outside Fallujah.

Dahr Jamailis originally fromAnchorage, Alaska. He has spent a total of 5 months in occupied Iraq,
and has now returned to continue reporting on the occupation. One of only a
few independent reporters in Iraq, Dahr will be using the
DahrJamailIraq.com
website and mailing list to disseminate his dispatches and will continue as
special correspondent for
Flashpoints Radio.